Conversations With a 2 Year Old

Brock's verbal skills have really been fascinating to Blaine and me over the past month. He has been a talker from kind of an early age (this was him saying some of the alphabet at 17 months), and it has always been neat to me to hear him learning new words and new rules of language. Over the past few weeks though, it seems like his speech has become so much more grown-up. It's nothing for him to string together a 10-word sentence now, and we can practically have whole conversations with him. It has been really interesting to us because it's like we occasionally get a look into his little mind. Sometimes he just gets stuck in repeat mode though and will only copy what we are saying, which is a little frustrating because it goes something like this:

"Do you need to go potty?"
"Need to go potty"

"Is that a yes or no?"

"Yes or no"

"Brock, do you need to potty?"

"To potty?"

"Ok, go sit on the potty, Brock"

"Noooo, Brock's not need to go potty!"

Aside from those episodes though, we've heard some interesting little sentences lately. I wanted to post them to the blog, one, because I think they're pretty entertaining, but also because I really want to remember what his little toddler self talked like (in case his little teenager self says much less endearing things).

Sometimes we will ask him to pray before bed or before our meals. This is how that goes:

"God, fanks for today, fanks for the food, fank you for Mommy and Daddy and Roman and Brock and Piper. Fanks for play. Amen"

He prays the same thing every time (thanking God for the food even at bedtime). I also like how he thanks God for himself. And that last one, "thanks for play" took us a while to figure out. We thought he was thanking God for the time he got to play or something, but after I blessed the meal one night, we realized what it was he was trying to say: "In Jesus' name I pray"

While eating a snack together in his room one afternoon:

"Mommy, eat the cheez-it!"

"They're all gone."

"Mommy, eat the cheez-it!!"

"We ate them all Brock. There aren't any more in the bowl."

"Mommy! Go downstairs and get some more cheez-its out of the box."

Oh, I wasn't aware you had figured out how that works.

One of my least favorites:

"Hey Mom, Brock's poo-pooed in da floor! I get a BIIIIIGGGGG treat!"

No, son, I'm not sure you've quite figured out how this works yet.

Blaine and I like to ask Brock on random occasions who loves him, and he'll usually go through a list, "Mommys wuvs you; Daddys wuvs you; Jesus wuvs you; Romans wuvs you; Pipers wuvs you" (he always adds an 's' at the end of everyone's name for some reason). This was how it went the other day:

"Hey Brock, who loves you?"

"Tow-maters wuvs you"

We're very into the Cars characters right now.

While having a discussion about how to act around other people:

"Brock, when someone says hi to you, say hi back. If someone is talking to you, be nice to them. Don't say, 'Mommy, Mommy, Mommy' over and over. It makes you seem like a weirdo."

"No, I not a weirdo."

"I know you're not, but when your family or your friends talk to you and you just say Mommy and hide behind me, they might think you're a weirdo."

"No, Mommy, I not a weirdo. Weirdos at church."

Hmmmm.... that is not where I saw this conversation going.

Upon finding a store receipt in the floor:

"Hey Mommy! Here's your twenty-hundred dollars!"

No clue where he got that, but every receipt he finds is "twenty-hundred dollars"

Blaine has always told Brock that blood was just cherry juice, I think in an effort to lessen the fear that comes from a busted lip or scraped knee. The other night at dinner Blaine was trying to explain to Brock why he needed to sit still in his booster seat:

"Son, if you keep rocking forward like that, you might break the strap on your chair. Then if the strap breaks and you're throwing yourself forward, you're going to either fall out of your chair or fall forward and hit your face on the table, and either way there will probably be a lot of cherry juice."

"Oooh, cherry like a ICEE! Can I have a ICEE?"

Blaine always gives him long, detailed explanations and then shakes his head in dismay when he realizes what Brock takes away from them.

"Mommy's gotta eat Roman" when I have to feed Roman

"Look Mommy, Roman's dripping" when Roman spits up

"Hey little brother. Did you sleep good?" when Roman wakes from a nap

And finally...
"Hey Mommy, Brock's making milk. Vooo-tish, voooo-tish..." as he sticks one of my breastpump parts to his stomach and pushes his belly out. (Vooo-tish is a robot/machine noise he learned from his daddy's plethora of sound effects)

I can't wait to see what else we hear from that mouth in the future.